The question of the value of exercise.

[Christian Miller]

Me too. Reminds me more Half Nelson than it does Moose the Mooch. Still a great bebop head.

Or Little Willie leaps which has some of the same motive/phrases iirc

Yeah, so this is so interesting. I don’t want to quote a post you ended up editing heavily, but you’d mentioned being able to tap out a bebop rhythm and have it be distinguishable as bebop. I think that’s totally true. But it’s also true that you can have two sets of eighth notes and have one be bebop and the other not.

The rhythms and notes (in particular chromaticism) are really really inseparable. One of my favorite exercises for students is to give them a rhythm (any rhythm) and have them improvise the notes over some changes, but only with that rhythm. It’s super interesting to watch it start as super awkward, and then slowly become passable as they get a sense of what notes work with that rhythm, then start to sound almost like music as they get a sense of the dynamics and accent patterns and stuff.

It’s so interesting. We spend all our time thinking about what notes to play and then getting a rhythm that works with the notes. We don’t even think about the fact that it works the other way too and is just as important. That you can’t just put any old group of notes over a particular rhythm.

It’s completely backwards. But a lot of jazz students frustrated with their progress just don’t have any rhythm in their bag. I can’t see that as coincidental.

First thing I learned in jazz was Sonny Rollins ‘if you can play one note with rhythm, you can play jazz’ - took me thirty years to realise what a deep statement that is and also how few people can do it even for a chorus of a blues.

so the question becomes, how do you teach that? Maybe - can you teach that?

I mean teach ‘composite scales’ and systems and voicings? much easier. And people with rhythm might even make them sound good too haha.

There’s tricks and exercises but tbh the best I think I can do on the rhythm front is encourage people to get the music to teach them.

The opening of Au Privave is such a slammin bebop line, but that rhythm couldn’t be a diatonic scale or a pure arpeggio or something. It really needs that melodic bouncing to go with the rhythmic bounce.

True. As chromaticism it’s quite subtle (one chromatic note in two bars of diatonic F major pitches) but it adds to the feel of the phrase, I don’t think a G would be as propulsive.

And then it’s also the classic Bird thing of, play in 3/4 over 4/4 time. (Which has of course also become commonplace as a phrasing device in popular music.) I suppose there are cool math things you can do like that that help swing. Grouping 8ths in 5’s and so on. (Django did that!)

Lots of Charlie Christian and Louis. A little Coleman Hawkins and a little less Lester Young. Had a phase where I listened to tonnnnns of Ben Webster but never transcribed him.

then you know what I mean. Christian comes the closest perhaps, but he’s still not quite bop.

[pamosmusic]

First thing I learned in jazz was Sonny Rollins ‘if you can play one note with rhythm, you can play jazz’ - took me thirty years to realise what a deep statement that is and also how few people can do it even for a chorus of a blues.

so the question becomes, how do you teach that? Maybe - can you teach that?

Yeah before I do that exercise I mentioned, I sometimes literally tell students that I can think of a thousand different ways to help them figure out new notes to play, but for rhythms I only have one.

Copy a rhythm that sounds good and use it a lot.

You can do some things to derive other ideas. Displacing it like Jeff mentioned is super cool. You could always like … write accent patterns into it or something? Or maybe play the rhythm over a tune in a different time signature? You mentioned Birds propensity to play three over four, for example.

Anyway … lots of ways I guess to get mileage out of a rhythm—but how do you decide what rhythm to play?

I think just listen and copy what moves you. Don’t know if there’s anything else.

[Jimmy Smith]

The line shape makes the first line of au privave pop off. And what is the line shape composed of? Wider intervals and chromatics. Like I've been saying how bop vocab or any melody vocab is built. Scales, arps, intervals, chromatics.